1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device, particularly an image processing device capable of detecting faces in contents. The present invention also relates to an imaging apparatus provided with such an image processing device. Furthermore, the present invention relates to an image processing method used in each of the image processing device and the imaging apparatus. Furthermore, the present invention relates to a program for allowing a computer to execute such an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Techniques have been proposed to facilitate various operations using metadata. Here, content data such as a still image or a video is correlated with metadata incidental thereto and stored in a memory before the use. In recent years, there is a technique for detecting a character's face contained in content data such as a still image or a video. In addition, a technique for registering information about the detected face as metadata has been proposed.
For example, in a proposed metadata registration method, a face is detected in a captured image. A rectangular region containing the face is combined with personal information such as a corresponding person's name of the face and then stored as metadata in an XML format. Subsequently, the metadata is registered by being written on part of an image file (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-336466 (FIG. 2)).